


Weapon of Choice

by Mitsuhachi



Series: Jager OC Hell [4]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Kids make Frigg do the panic dance, Oggie is good with kids but he's still a jager, Sorina is terrifying and awesome, all the oc's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6044545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuhachi/pseuds/Mitsuhachi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Ara ends up with the jagerkin</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weapon of Choice

**Author's Note:**

> The one with the knives is my Frigg, seen elsewhere. The arm-breaking Valkyrie is Mirrors' Sorina, thank you for letting me borrow her.

Marioara is five years old, and she's standing by the wall of her family's shop watching the other children play in the wide dirt road. Anto and Leonin and Jakob are chasing Bethany, and...two other little girls she knows she should recognize but doesn't. Bethany whirls and screeches something at the boys and Jakob yells back and then they apparently change ends because now the girls are chasing after the boys. Marioara's older sister Karina brushes past her through the doorway with her arms full of a tray of steaming bread, long skirts brushing Ara's face.

"You should go play too," she chides--Ara isnt sure whether she's annoyed with her or trying to encourage her or just doesn't want her in the way. She looks at the other children. It won't end well. But Marioara is not a coward. She goes.

She catches Leonin's elbow before he even realizes she's there, holds him steady as the little girl in the green dress almost runs into him. "CHEATING!" Leonin roars.

"I caught you," Ara corrects, quite calmly. 

"Thats not how you're supposed to play!" Green dress yells, and Bethany adds "What are you even doing here?" "You can't play with us!" is probably one of the boys, but before Ara can look there's the heavy thunk of a rock hitting the back of her head.

And then another against her shoulder. 

"Fine! I'll go!" She yells, trying to cover the back of her neck, but they've got her in a ring now and Anto is bending down for a pretty big rock, and another has just hit the back of her hand and from the side one gets her knee and she hears herself yelling stop but all the other children are yelling things over her in a horrible wordless rumble like getting caught in an avalanche and Ara is actually going to die like this isn't she? 

Not crouched on her knees in the dirt with her hands up, she isn't.

She makes herself stand up even though her knee really hurts and runs as fast as she can at the boy in front of her, clenching her fist and cracking him solid in the jaw. He falls down and Ara follows him, draws back to punch again and---a clawed hand closes around her fist, gentle but firm.

"Dot iz not how hyu do eet," the...monster says. He's very tall and sort of pinkish like most of the people in the town, but you couldn't mistake him for normal. There was the horn, if nothing else. Out of the corner of her eye Ara can see the other children scatter, but they drop the rocks too so for now she ignores them. The monster is more interesting.

"Not how you do what?" She asks, when she's figured out how to make her voice work again. Its probably too quiet, but he doesn't seem to have any problem hearing her.

"How hyu mek a feest. Hyu iz gon brek hyur thumb doink eet like dot," the monster actually explains. Big rough fingers tug her fist open and guide her thumb around to the outside of her fingers, nudges her wrist until her hand is in line with her forearm instead of curled tight. He steps back and holds up his hand. "Hokay, hyu try eet like dot."

Oh. That feels much better. Her face must be doing a thing because he laughs. "Gut gurl," he tells her, and something lights up behind Ara's ribs. 

"Thank you," she says, looking up at him properly. "I'll practice." 

He just pats her head and walks off, but Ara watches him until he's out of sight. The grown ups look at him the same way the children look at Ara, but he isn't afraid. He keeps his head up and she shoulders straight and walks like he owns the whole town and everything in it.

Ara is going to walk like that, she decides. She keeps her head up the whole way home, and around to the water barrel, and right up until her mother sees her and squawks "what did you do to your dress?!"

Its okay. Ara can practice.

****

Marioara is six and she's monster-walking up to a group of the monster-men clusters outside the door to the public house. She hasn't seen the pink one again, but the grown ups look at these monsters just like they did at him so Ara decides they must be Good too. Also the bluish one is flipping a knife and it looks dangerous and cool.

"How do you do that?" She demands, pointing at the knife. The blue guy startles. 

"Uh, vhat?"

"The thing, there, with the knife!" The other monsters are laughing. At her? Not looking at her, probably not. "Teach me!"

"Hyu a nursemaid now, Frigg? Hy dint know hyu hed keeds!"

"Hy don't!"

"Teach me the knife thing," Ara says again, because the monster is not listening to her and this is important. 

He looks back down at her. "No?"

Maybe he's afraid of her. That would be nice. Ara stomps closer and tries to scowl like her father when he comes home from the pub late at night. "Teach me the knife thing," she growls. It doesnt work as well for her, somehow.

The monster does a weird flail thing with his elbows and his spine. "Hy gotz to go on long survey keed hy kent teach hyu der knife ting." Ara narrows her eyes further and stares at him. "How about dis den, hy teach hyu de next time hy em in town, hokay?"

Ara considers this for a while and finally nods. She was supposed to be fetching flour for her mother anyway, later is probably best. She turns to walk off without saying anything else. The other monsters are laughing again.

"Eh, she forget, keeds do dot, und dis vay hy dun heff to argue mit her."

*****

Ara doesn't forget.

She's six and a half, and she hears the window downstairs break with a crash. She comes out into the hall in her nightshirt, listening with half an ear to her mother herding her little brother and sister into the back bedroom. The baby is crying, and Anna is too. Ara doesn't know why, the monsters never really hurt anyone on these raids unless they fight. Papa is probably outside trying to hide at least one or two chickens. She walks down the stairs. 

The blue monster is in their kitchen, a bottle of mother's honeywine tucked under his arm while he pokes around the larder. Ara walks over and kicks his ankle. 

He looks down. His legs bend weird. "Ho sheet, itz dot keed," he says, dropping the wine.

Ara puts her hands on her hips. "Its next time," she reminds him. He gawks at her silently for a long minute. Outside, someone screams. There's the bright flash of something catching fire. Ara turns and gets a cooking knife out of the drawer and hands it handle-first to the monster. She only has to shake it at him a couple of times to get him to take it. 

It's pretty exaggerated when the blue monster shrugs. Ara approves. "Hyu tek it by der point like dis..."

*****

Marioara is nine, and she's waiting outside the public house to get her father home when the traveling spark who'd patted her bottom that morning gets tossed out into the street right in front of her.

"UND NEXT TIME HYU LEESTEN VHEN A LADY TELLS HYU VHERE HYU HENDS DO UND DUN GO!" The woman taking up the whole doorway shouts after him. She's a gorgeous deep blue and has hair like a great cloud around her shoulders, and when the spark staggers back up trying to throw a punch at her she does a complicated little sweep with both her hands that ends with a sharp crack and the spark back on the ground. "Get. Out," she growls.

The spark curls around an arm bent the wrong way and whimpers, scuttling backwards without sparing Ara a glance.

Ara walks up to the woman without hesitation. "Teach me how you did that." She asks breathlessly, staring up at her as the woman puts a wallet into her bag beside the one already there.

The woman smiles, teeth glinting in the torchlight. "Hokay."  
*****

Marioara is twelve. She knows how to punch and throw knives and shoot a longbow and break a man's bones if she has to and how to walk like the she owns the world and isn't afraid of anything. She's standing by the well watching a green jagermonster pull a purple one's long hair, swipe at his cool hat and almost knock it off. "Im going to be that someday," she promises herself quietly.

Jakob hears her. "Don't be stupid, Jagermonstern are all from the army. Girls can't join the army, they're only good for having stupid babies."

Ara turns to stare at him. It seems to bother people when she looks at them like that, but Jakob knows better than to try hurting her by now. He sneers half-heartedly and Ara nods. "Okay, then."

She walks away from the well with her buckets, and when she gets home she takes the narrow kitchen knife she'd claimed as her own and hacks all her hair off from the nape of her neck. She steals a pair of Claude's trousers and helps Anna hem up every single one of her dresses to fit her littler frame.

If girls cannot be Jagermonstern, then Ara will not be a girl.

Her mother screams at her for a solid hour.

Ara doesn't care.

*****

Ara is fifteen and she is walking up the dusty road towards Mechanicsburg. Her father had come into the kitchen that morning, shoulders slumped, and told her that Dromo the butcher had decided he'd rather have Anna to be his wife, and they couldn't think of anyone else who might want her. She apparently had a grand-aunt in the city who might be able to find her some way to be useful, though, and it might be better for Ara to just take what opportunities she could get. Ara had nodded, packed her spare trousers and coat and the little money they'd scraped together for her dowery and walked off without looking back.

When she gets to the city, she doesn't even bother looking for the aunt's house. Instead she asks the gate-guard directions to the recruiting office and goes straight there. 

*****

Ara is twenty-two and she's sitting in the med tent getting her arm set. She'd thrown herself into the bowels of this enormous clank that was pinning her squad down, stuck her arm right between two gears to pull the wiring that made it stop. Her whole squad made it out with nothing worse than superficial burns. 

Her CO is standing on the other side of the room, chatting with her sergeant where he thinks she can't hear. "Ought to recommend her for the brau, you know she wants it, and the lads will make trouble for her after this. Better to just get her out of the way."

"Maybe she'll die, then she won't be anyone's problem anymore."

Ara grits her teeth as the wrappings go on around her splint and stares straight ahead. She isn't going to die. She _isn't._

*****

Ara is twenty three and she's collapsed on the floor of the cathedral laboratory roaring at the pain with her teeth all bared as her head splits open.

She doesn't die.


End file.
